Dear Evelyn, It Ain’t That Serious

If you watched the season premier of Basketball Wives last night, you probably walked away from the episode thinking the same thing I did about Evelyn’s beef with Jennifer: That’s why you mad?

The arguing between the two was literally a blank stare segment as Evelyn explained being angry over a blog post where Jen said she doesn’t mess around with the same type of guys that Evelyn dates. I’m sorry, what? Did I miss something? That’s worth ending a 14-year relationship? Evelyn stop. The real reason she’s mad with Jen is because she forgot the first rule of friendship: never let a man come between you.

This isn’t the first time Evelyn’s gotten mad with Jen over something that had to do with Ochocinco. Remember Italy? Ev declared their friendship was a done deal during the trip because Jen made a comment on the radio about Chad being an attention Slore and suddenly the gloves came out. Jen probably could’ve dropped the attention part and still been accurate, but to throw a friendship out the window over a comment about your man is absolutely crazy.

I can see Evelyn’s point to the extent that you really shouldn’t discuss your friend’s relationships publicly at all, especially if you’re going to throw shade on them, but I don’t think Jen’s comments really even qualify as shade. Perhaps Evelyn’s own knowledge of the type of man Chad really is led her to read into Jen’s blog as implying the type of men she dates are bad—otherwise I just don’t see why she’s hellbent on holding a grudge.

Evelyn is the classic childish woman who can’t stand to hear anything negative about the guy she’s with and who will lose everyone around her defending that man to the death. We typically only think of men coming in between friends when it comes to dating the same guy but a man can tear friends apart over much less. Most friendships don’t survive when one friend doesn’t like the mate of the other. Unfortunately, most of those relationships don’t end up lasting either and then you’ve lost a friend over nothing. If Chad and Evelyn don’t walk down the aisle this summer, Evelyn is going to look like an even bigger loser than the clips from this season foreshadow her to be.

It’s fine to call out a friend who’s speaking ill of your man, you may even need to put a little space between the two of you, but when 14 years of friendship gets tossed aside over a remark about a two-year relationship that stays on the rocks someone is being foolish and it’s not the friend who called him out. I highly doubt Chad is fighting just as hard to defend Evelyn’s reputation amongst his boys.

One good thing about this whole situation is Jen appears to be getting out from under the shadow of Evelyn and sticking up for herself now that she can see her for who she really is. Anybody who can turn on you that quickly and that harshly trying to protect the image of her relationship—and now wants to fight you every time she sees you as if there was never any love there—is not worth having around.

Do you think Evelyn has a right to be mad or is she being childish? Have you ever lost a friend because one of you didn’t like the guy the other was dating?

Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.